Saturday, July 14, 2012

A month or so ago Anne-Marie Slaughter set the thinking
world ablaze by asserting that she could not have it all, that she had to
choose. My posts here and here.

She had to choose between her responsibility to her job as a
high ranking State Department official and her responsibility to her children.

She chose her children.

Many feminists were enraged. For decades feminists have
been telling young women that they can postpone marriage and childrearing,
develop their careers, and then, with the help of a supportive husband, bring
up their children and advance their careers at the same time.

For want of a better expression, it’s been called: having it
all.

It was, and still is a lie, but who’s watching.

Strangely, in an ideology that has made the phrase “free
choice” a mantra that you could wave about to solve all problems, the notion
that a woman might have to make a free choice between career and motherhood
strikes feminists as an ultimate indignity.

As I mentioned previously, Slaughter threw her fellow
feminists a bone by suggesting that women in the future might find the means to
have it all.

Technology, she opined, would allow women, and perhaps even
men, to work from home. Then, no one would have to choose between family and
career.

In an alternative universe Slaughter was saying, women would
not have to choose.

In my post I explained that even if women, or men, work from
home, their absence from the office will surely work to their detriment.

You can do a job from home, but your absence from the office
will surely undermine your career advancement.

Workers
who are seen at their desks during regular work hours are considered
“responsible” and “dependable,” they wrote: “Just being seen at work, without
any information about what you’re actually doing, leads people to think more
highly of you.”

Work
longer hours — early, late, or on weekends — and “rather than just being
considered dependable, you can get upgraded to ‘committed’ and ‘dedicated,’”
according to the article, which referenced a paper Elsbach and Cable published
in the academic journal Human Relations.

Bosses,
and peers, often don’t realize they’re forming views of workers’ competence
based on whether they’re at their desk, Cable said in an interview with The
Wall Street Journal.

“Without
us knowing it, we are creating these assumptions about people based on physical
presence,” he said. This isn’t just a perception. Bosses’ vague feelings that a
worker does a better job can be seen on employee evaluations, especially when
they’re encouraged to make subjective calls in performance reviews.

That
leads to pay, promotion, and career-trajectory decisions. Cable estimates that
more than 60% of companies are still using “1950s-style” evaluations that
prioritize such subjective write-ups over hard data on sales wins, customer
satisfaction, or other measures of the employee’s business performance.

Naturally, the authors believe that reality discriminates
against mothers who work from home. Thus, they feel compelled to offer various
remedies.

Hope and ideology die hard.

The truth is, women who want to have careers and to be good
mothers might very well be faced with a choice. Hopefully, it is a free choice.
But, just as hopefully, feminists will stop telling young women that they are
going to create an alternative universe where they no longer have to choose.

1 comment:

One wonders where all these people were who can always find discrimination agains't women were when men had, and still do, have limited choices. Is there a working male alive who doesn't realize that not being visible, especially later in the work day, will harm their chances and growth in almost any organization?Where were these people when many of us who did not come from families with the means to send them to college wound up being drafted, enlisting or finding some place to hide? I chose to enlist and get a job I enjoyed instead of being drafted into the Army and doing something I did not have a choice in.When most of us got married we knew that many of our hopes and dreams were going to be limited by that choice, but we understood we made that choice? Isn't that what is meant by making a choice. I never sew, read or heard of anyone, especially in academe, stating that we men were being discriminated agains't. When my family need more money to do well I chose to work as a bar stocker at an Officer's Club. I don't think I complained and whined about lifting kegs of beer, washing glasses and the other things that were part of the job and surely no one was around pointing out discrimination. I also worked as a bartender, driving cars for a rental company as well as my military job.I am no different than a lot of men who had to make choices that were very limited, but did it for the greater good. Choice is just that a choice one makes knowing there are positives and negatives to that choice. It is freedom of choice not freedom from choice.Sometimes I get so tired of woman whine that I wonder what would happen to these poorly equipped individuals if things really got tough. One wants to scream, "Grow Up Princess!!!"